Qriosity
by The Lilac Pilgrim
Summary: Q's been thinking a lot about Picard lately. Journal/Memoir type story from Q's perspective.


**Author's Note:** Okay. Okay okay. I am nervous about this one. Q/Picard (or PiQard? Portmanteau naming ftw?) is strong in this one, I reckon. Essentially, Q is musing and thinking deeply about his feelings for Picard. Sort like a journal or a memoir. Enjoy?

I don't own Star Trek: The Next Generation or know anyone from the production of any incarnation of Star Trek but I do follow John de Lancie and Brent Spiner and LeVar Burton on Twitter. Since that doesn't count I am totally covered for my obligatory disclaimer.

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><p>Things nowadays just seem to run into each other. Everything is, for lack of a better word, bland. It is difficult to express such things in simplistic human terms but then perhaps that is the point of this little exercise.<p>

Everything, after a while, starts to look the same. Inconsequential planets and stars that existed aeons ago within solar systems that died without the universe shedding a single tear seem to show up again, with the same inhabitants and dying the same deaths, and nothing moves me as it did back when all was new and bright and our species in our plane of existence was just starting to explore beyond our socially constructed boundaries. I say socially, because nothing else ever physically stops us. After years, and centuries, and millennia, and aeons, history has a very nasty habit of repeating itself.

Could I explain it to you? I believe there was an appliance known as the television. I understand that there were many different things to watch, and it's also my understanding that after some time of viewing, every show begins to be the same, and indeed many shows do appear again and again and again. Every so often something vaguely interesting appears, and it occupies you for a short amount of time. Once the glow of that is over, once the elation fades and that thing is nothing more than a rerun, you go back to watching, and waiting, and nothing new ever happening.

Imagine this over the course of billions of years.

I am, too, at the stage where nothing interests me. Nothing fascinates me anymore. A single thought and I have everything I want, anything I want, any time I want. But having everything you want soon becomes dull. Having anything your heart desires so immediately removes all of the fun. And with all the uniformity in this bleak and lonely universe, I cannot be moved, and I do not desire.

That is, except for him.

My project, I like to call him, but he's much more than that. His race is so primitive and unevolved but the potential is there, if they would stop being so self-destructive. But if I'm honest, I couldn't care less about the rest of them. Just that one being, that one person.

And at times I cannot believe that's all it took.

Just one thing aroused my curiosity. Of course I tease all of his crew as much as I tease him, but only because it gets a reaction. And it's true that I have expressed an interest in other members of his species of the same rank but it's not the same at all. There is a different feel to it, that is what I am experimenting with and it's always different. While I am entertained… they can never move me, keep my interest, make me _care_ as much as dear Jean-Luc Picard. For all my superiority, sometimes he provokes me as much as I provoke him. It's exhilarating.

And it's frightening.

I'm feeling emotions I'd forgotten that I could feel.

And it's wonderful.

I feel frustration, and longing, and fear, and excitement, and anger, and adoration, and impatience! He helps me to experience so much in his short little life, a life that will, inevitably, be forgotten by his race the longer they live on. And most definitely by mine, more interested in what they will become than what they once were.

I'll remember. Always.

What they will become will never be as breathtaking – I use the term figuratively, of course – as he is, the way he is, the person, the individual who creates such _passion_ in me.

And I'll look back and never stop looking back. His life will end and I will go on for aeons, wandering, waiting. Looking for another but there won't ever be one like him. I could wait for as long as my life has been and there won't be another, and it..

_Hurts_.

No, it's not a feeling I can describe accurately with such a limited vocabulary. It's a different kind of emotional pain to anything you could even begin to imagine, a mixture of the worst kind of depression and frustration and near-crippling anguish, with a generous helping of what could be called sexual tension.

There's another interesting human concept that I like to explore with him. Leading him through the boundaries, the limits of his own imagination. It seems it never occurred to him just how fragile those barriers were, and no matter how many he put up in response to me, I can almost always break them down.

Almost.

When you're omnipotent and immortal, there are rarely any surprises. You're supposed to know every possibility, every likely outcome of every action. And yet you _can_ be caught off-guard. Isn't that frustrating?

Maybe that's what I'm feeling. It's only regret, resentment, with a mixture of self-indulgent curiosity for the human race and the one man who typifies it so perfectly. He is soft and small, but stern and capable. He could be savage and brutal or he could be vulnerable, submissive. I'm not sure which way I like him better.

'At my mercy' is his constant status, of course. In true human fashion he often refuses to completely submit to the role but it wouldn't be nearly as interesting if there wasn't a little resistance. I hate to say it, but it makes things challenging. Don't get me wrong. I like a challenge. I never did expect to find one in such a futile, irrelevant, miniscule creature. Then again, surprises are just as nice as challenges.

Humans have this odd way of viewing the world and limited space in which they live. They, barring those affected by rather unfortunate cynicism, see the world as being a wondrous place of exploration and innovation, and the universe as an extension of what they already know. If they only knew how wrong they were. Of course I always challenge him on this and he always surprises me. Sometimes he plays right into my, let's call them _hands_, and does everything I expect him to do. Sometimes it just takes longer than I expected. Perhaps what I feel for him is more like what a human feels towards his dog… or an android towards his cat. Two very different things, yes. But for a Q, not that far removed from one another.

'Jumping through hoops', I believe is the expression. He does this so _elegantly_, as though he is only too pleased to show me what he is capable of. And I feel he is so easily amused, and then I realise what I'm doing. Watching this tiny blip on the radar of eternity performing for me – and me alone – and deriving great excitement and pleasure from it all. I believe we're making progress, too. I believe that he feels something for me that isn't simply weariness. But that he feels for me at all is a great success.

I am _thrilled _by it. Knowing that, when I'm around, I receive his full attention one way or the other. Possessive? Of course. When you can have _anything _you want, you tend to become possessive of _everything_ you want. Like a toy, or a car. Or for some, a lover. And isn't that just sickening? That I could compare myself to a concept so human in nature?

I could run from it forever but in the end I'm only being as primitive as him. Pretending that I don't see what's right in front of me, trying to delude myself as well as him and my brothers and sisters, because none of them could ever understand.

Or do I even understand?

I have never been so captivated. Not attending the births of stars and suns or planets or entire galaxies. Not in viewing the many timelines and possibilities of life and death. Not in the beginnings of new species or in their ends. Never in all of the incalculable years of my _life_ have I been so captivated as I am by him.

Does this mean… that he is the dominant one?

It is not a possibility I ever accounted for. There is that wonderful nature of his again. _Surprise, Q_! And he doesn't even _know_ he's doing it! It's beautiful and it's terrible and it's everything in between.

All these different threads, all these feelings and new experiences. I need to know more about it all. I thought I understood _everything_, and I'm adamant that I still do.

I just have some pieces of this magnificent puzzle that are a little out of place.

Must investigate further.


End file.
